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on MENA - Middle East and North Africa |
| By: | Aboulhosn, Aya; Aksoy, Cevat Giray; Özcan, Berkay |
| Abstract: | Research and policy debates on population ageing typically assume that immigration matters only through immigrants’ own fertility and its impact on total population size, ignoring effects on natives’ fertility. We study this margin in the context of the large inflow of Syrian refugees into Türkiye after 2011. Using an instrumental-variables strategy, we provide evidence that greater local exposure to refugees increases native fertility. Drawing on complete birth histories from the Demographic and Health Surveys, we find that the response operates primarily through earlier entry into motherhood and is concentrated among younger women. The result holds across three independent datasets, including administrative birth registers, and is mirrored in women’s stated ideal number of children. Examining potential mechanisms, we find the evidence most consistent with improved household economic security and find no support for channels operating through housing costs or the use of paid childcare. |
| Keywords: | forced migration;fertiliy;refugees;social interactions |
| JEL: | J13 R23 F22 |
| Date: | 2027–01–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:140520 |
| By: | Erol Taymaz (Department of Economics, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey); Kamil Yılmaz (Department of Economics, Koç University, İstanbul, Turkiye) |
| Abstract: | The employment effect of a minimum-wage increase depends on the wage-setting power of employers. The empirical literature, however, has measured this power only indirectly, through labor-market concentration. In this paper, we estimate firm-level product markups and wage markdowns for Turkish manufacturing firms using the Entrepreneur Information System (EIS) administrative micro-data. We show that a firm’s initial markdown predicts the sign and magnitude of its direct employment response to minimum-wage increases, including the exceptionally large January 2016 increase (33% nominal, ≈25% real). At minimum-wage firms with no markdown, employment falls year after year. At high-markdown firms that face the same wage floor, employment does not fall. The monopsony model can explain this difference, whereas the competitive model predicts employment losses for both groups of firms. Among firms paying the minimum wage, employment growth increases with the initial markdown in every year over 2013–2019: conditional on sector-year and province-year effects, high-markdown minimum-wage firms grow 6 to 9 log points faster annually than zero-markdown firms paying the same wage. |
| Keywords: | minimum wage, monopsony, labor market power, markdowns, markups, employment, production function estimation, Turkey |
| JEL: | D24 J23 J31 J38 J42 L11 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:met:wpaper:2605 |
| By: | KINA, MEHMET FUAT; Ekmen, Helin Yaren |
| Abstract: | Large language models are increasingly used to simulate survey respondents, yet the inference pipeline that turns a persona into a response is rarely calibrated for the population and outcome it is applied to. This study makes population- and outcome-specific calibration the research task itself. Using a nationally representative survey in Turkey as the benchmark, we construct persona-conditioned synthetic respondents for all 2, 615 survey participants and search a structured space of persona content, sampling strategies, temperatures, model backbones, and prompt framings. Calibration is assessed against two held-out outcomes that carry the response structures on which social movement research typically rests, a rare binary measure of protest participation and a five-point attitude item, and the selected protocols differ between the two. We then run a within-persona synthetic experiment that places the same protest for Kurdish-language education in a political opportunity and a political threat context. The threat context lowers simulated movement legitimacy and willingness to attend, and the simulated contrasts differentiate by political orientation, ethnicity, and education in the directions theory anticipates. Calibration is a precondition for reading synthetic experiments, not a robustness check appended to them. |
| Date: | 2026–09–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:hp7gz_v1 |
| By: | Sultan Mehmood; Yaroslav Prokhorskoy; Leonard Wantchekon |
| Abstract: | Can foreign intervention redirect domestic mobilization toward the regime it seeks to weaken? We study the 2026 U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran, which occurred amid a nationwide anti-government uprising. Combining high-frequency geocoded data on protests with geocoded records of U.S.–Israeli strikes, we document a sharp reversal in political mobilization. Anti-government protest was widespread before the strikes and receded sharply through February amid domestic repression and an intensifying “foreign-agent” narrative. Following the strikes, pro-government rallies and protests against the United States and Israel spread across the country. Exploiting the precise location and staggered timing of counties’ first exposure to a U.S.–Israeli strike, we find little change in total protest activity but a sharp shift from anti-government to pro-government protest. Public statements by U.S. and Israeli leaders increasingly aligned themselves with the protest movement, while Iranian officials portrayed the unrest as foreign-backed. These patterns are consistent with strategic sovereignty: overt foreign intervention can make domestic opposition easier to portray as aligned with an external adversary, weakening its legitimacy and redirecting collective action toward defense of the state. |
| JEL: | H56 H89 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35734 |
| By: | Asik Erpek, Gunes Arkadas; Hari, Siddharth; Ozen, Efsan Nas; Raju, Dhushyanth |
| Abstract: | Artificial intelligence (AI) has attracted growing attention as a potential source of productivity growth and structural transformation in emerging economies. Yet the labor market implications of AI depend not only on technological capabilities but also on how those capabilities interact with firm behavior, workers’ skills, and institutional conditions. This paper provides a systematic diagnostic of how AI-related technological potential is distributed across Türkiye’s labor market and examines the conditions under which that potential may translate into observable labor market outcomes. The analysis applies occupation-level measures of AI exposure and task complementarity to nationally representative labor force survey data and employer-employee administrative records. It documents how AI-related technological potential is distributed across workers, jobs, firms, sectors, and regions. The results show that approximately 41 percent of employment in Türkiye is in occupations with relatively high exposure to AI, although the scope for productivity-enhancing complementarity varies substantially across occupations and worker groups. Given the early stage of AI diffusion and the rapid evolution of AI capabilities, these estimates should be interpreted as a descriptive mapping of technological exposure and potential complementarity rather than as forecasts of realized employment, wage, or product ivity effects. Despite this widespread exposure, employment and labor demand patterns across exposure categories have remained largely stable in recent years, suggesting that the translation of technological potential into observable labor market effects depends critically on adoption dynamics and complementary adjustments within firms and labor markets. Drawing on additional evidence on firm adoption, hiring patterns, and labor market structure, the paper argues that the economic consequences of AI are likely to unfold gradually through changes in task organization, skill demand, and production processes rather than through abrupt economywide disruption. By distinguishing technological exposure from complementarity and adoption capacity, the paper provides an analytical framework for interpreting emerging evidence on AI and work. It also highlights the policy margins most relevant to shaping labor market adjustment in middle-income economies. |
| Date: | 2026–07–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:hdnspu:213012 |
| By: | Cigdem Ekiz (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University , UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, the Netherlands); Eren Gurer (Department of Economics, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkiye); Erol Taymaz (Department of Economics, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkiye) |
| Abstract: | We examine how innovation shapes firm-level workforce dynamics using rich administrative data from Türkiye, a developing economy characterized by medium-technology, incremental innovation. We find that patent-based innovation increases both firm size and average daily wages, with the largest employment gains among workers earning just above the median wage. To uncover the mechanisms behind these outcomes, we construct worker transition matrices. Relative to comparable non-innovative firms, innovative firms (i) retain incumbent workers at higher rates, particularly at the top of the wage distribution, (ii) promote retained workers into higher wage bins more frequently, and (iii) hire more new workers, disproportionately into higher wage bins. Finally, occupational composition analysis shows that employment growth is concentrated among technical and production occupations, consistent with the medium-technology, incremental nature of innovation in our sample. |
| Keywords: | innovation, patents, wages, employment, worker transitions |
| JEL: | J21 J31 O31 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:met:wpaper:2604 |
| By: | Acar-Burkay, Sinem |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the question of the effects of ethnic diversity on economic growth. It extends the cross-country growth regressions in Easterly and Levine (1997) by allowing for growth effects of natural resources to depend on the amount of ethnic fractionalization to see if ethnic diversity, natural resource abundance, and the interaction of the two can explain Middle Eastern Countries' poor economic performance. And, the answer is found to be “yes”: The resource curse applies in ethnically heterogeneous countries but not in homogenous ones. |
| Date: | 2026–09–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:mkq3e_v1 |